You Can't Say That Again

Once upon a time (probably around when most people reading this were in middle school), a series of ads for Budweiser beer started up on the radio that I found highly entertaining. The ads were patterned as tributes to "real American heroes" who had contributed something ridiculously mundane and useless, let strangely beloved, to our society. They came complete with goofy, over-the-top hymns of exultation and spirited oration praising the greatness of "Mr. Footlong Hotdog Inventor" and his fellows of great accomplishment.

Post September 11th, the ads mysteriously disappeared--we had American heroes on the brain, and parodies thereof wouldn't have generated much positive publicity, regardless of how funny they were. Within the year, though, the ads came back; but instead of "real American heroes," they focused their attention on "real men of genius."

The ads are still on in that form today. Following the pattern of most ads, they never did increase my opinion of Budweiser beer, but I used to find them pretty entertaining. Once they took up the "real men of genius" trope... not so much. They lose me when I hear the background singer try to cram the words "real men of genius" into a jingle that clearly was not patterned for those words, but more importantly, the whole premise that made them funny in the first place--a satire on the element of our culture that holds useless crap so dear to our hearts--is gone behind a thin veil of political correctness.

I hear comedians rant about political correctness a lot, and I feel what they're saying--sometimes. The theater I write for is close to the most artsy, liberal neighborhood in Columbus (i.e. The Short North), so I need to be careful when it comes to jokes involving environmentalists, gay people, and a few other topics.

Now, that doesn't mean I can't write jokes about those things; it just means that if I do, then they'd better be really, really, really funny.

In some ways, comedians are still filling the role of the medieval court jester; being the funny guy in the room allows us to breach some otherwise very touchy subjects. It also wasn't unusual for jesters to be executed (thank goodness that isn't still part of the job) if they did that in a way that just wasn't very funny, and therefore wasn't much different from a normal person saying the same thing.

Political correctness is always a concern in the comedy business, but the comedians who complain about it (most of the ones I know hang around the Boston comedy circuit and have acts in which they try to be Lewis Black and fail desperately) are generally comedians who aren't very good at what they do. Like the "real American heroes" ads: were they funny? Sure. Were they that funny? Not enough to excuse them post-9/11. Thus the reason for the switch (though, if you ask me, they should have just quit while they were ahead).

This is an equation that's true not just for comedy, but for pretty much all forms of entertainment. Think of John Lennon saying The Beatles are bigger than Jesus. Clever? Maybe. That clever? Definitely not.

Or, more recently, Don Imus's "nappy-headed hoes" remark.

In my case, I think of Gone with the Wind. The movie I can stand, but I've tried to read the book, and I just can't; for me, no level of literary quality will ever excuse the racism that pervades it.

Now think of Dave Chappelle, Strangers with Candy, Lewis Black, and South Park, all of which are as far from PC as you can get. The difference is, they're funny. Stanley Kubrick was an asshole of cosmic proportions, but he made incredible movies in so being. Ray Bradbury, if you read the subtext of his books the way he wants you to, is saying some pretty horrible stuff. For me, that's not enough to excuse Fahrenheit 451, but The Martian Chronicles? Sure.

One could point out that this kind of double-standard isn't fair to us in the business. All I can say is, if your work isn't good enough to get around that, quit complaining.